Last week, we warned that America’s fuel system was heading into refinery maintenance season with dangerously little room for another major disruption.
Then another disruption showed up.
Exxon Mobil’s Joliet refinery outside Chicago lost power Sunday and shut down. As of Friday morning, it still wasn’t running, and Exxon had not given a restart date. The company has since disclosed that floodwater overwhelmed a pump at the refinery, while the original blackout was blamed on storm damage to ComEd power lines.
Joliet produces roughly 11 million gallons of gasoline and diesel every day. Five days offline means something on the order of 55 million gallons of fuel never made, right in the middle of harvest season. At the same time, the Saudi pipeline being used to move oil around the Strait of Hormuz has apparently taken more damage than originally reported.
And diesel is already averaging about $6.39 a gallon nationwide.
Joliet Could Be Down Longer Than People Think
The early talk was that Joliet could be back to normal by the end of the week. That isn’t happening.
Exxon wouldn’t give Chicago reporters a reopening date, and there’s a good reason to be skeptical of quick restart predictions.
This same refinery went through something similar in July 2024 when a storm knocked out power. Exxon didn’t restart even selected units for about three weeks. The disruption got bad enough that the EPA eventually issued an emergency fuel waiver covering several Midwest states.
Today diesel is already sitting at record levels, global refinery capacity is under pressure, the Middle East is a disaster, and one of Saudi Arabia’s main routes around Hormuz has been hit. Joliet supplies a big chunk of the Midwest fuel market, including Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
If this shutdown drags on, those states are going to feel it first.
But don’t make the mistake of thinking this is only a Midwest problem. Diesel moves almost everything in this country. Food, construction materials, farm equipment, delivery trucks and heavy machinery all depend on it. When diesel gets hammered, eventually you get hammered too — along with the price of everything you buy!
Saudi Arabia’s Backup Route Isn’t Looking So Good Either
The Saudi East-West pipeline was supposed to be one of the pressure-release valves for the current oil crisis.
Instead of sending crude through the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia can move millions of barrels a day across the country to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Then drones hit the pipeline.
Initial reports talked about one damaged pumping station. Then two. Reuters is now reporting that three pumping stations may have been damaged, based on satellite imagery and industry sources.
Some estimates say repairs could take five or six weeks.
Before the attack, the line had reportedly been moving somewhere around 4 to 5 million barrels a day across Saudi Arabia. That’s oil the world was relying on specifically because normal shipping routes through Hormuz have become unreliable.
Even JPMorgan Doesn’t Know How This Ends
One of the more interesting developments this week came from JPMorgan.
The bank had been modeling the conflict around the idea that certain economic breaking points would eventually force some kind of resolution. Oil over $100. Gasoline approaching $5. Treasury yields above 5 percent.
Those levels came and went.
Now JPMorgan’s commodities team says it no longer has a clear baseline for how the conflict ends.
That’s worth paying attention to.
Global crude and fuel inventories have already fallen roughly 555 million barrels since the conflict began. At the same time, world oil demand has dropped sharply as high prices force people and businesses to use less fuel.
You drive less because gasoline costs too much. A trucking company parks equipment because the route isn’t profitable. A farmer delays work. A construction company cuts jobs. Families stop spending money somewhere else because another $100 or $200 a month is disappearing into the gas tank.
That’s how an energy crisis works its way into the rest of the economy.
And we’re heading toward winter with diesel already at record prices.
This Is Why You Prepare Before the Shortage Hits
Fuel
If you live in the Joliet footprint, top off your vehicles, farm tank, generator and diesel equipment now. Don’t wait for Exxon to announce a restart. The last time this plant lost power, restarting even part of it took three weeks, and prices at the pump lag the wholesale market by days. Store only what you can keep safely and legally, and add stabilizer to anything going into longer storage. Our $7 diesel breakdown covers fill-up timing and the export-ban wildcard.
Cash and paperwork
The card reader on a gas pump is an electrical device, and this week showed how easily one utility failure can cascade. Keep enough cash at home to buy fuel and groceries for a couple of weeks if terminals go down. Keep your vehicle titles, insurance cards and any heating-assistance paperwork where you can grab them in five minutes. If you qualify for LIHEAP, apply early, before the money runs thin. Our guide to preparing for an economic collapse walks through the financial side.
Food
Diesel costs reach the grocery shelf slowly, through freight surcharges that take weeks to show up in prices. JPMorgan’s “demand destruction” is also going to show up as layoffs in freight, construction and farming, which means some households lose income just as food costs rise. Buy extra of what your family already eats while shelf prices still reflect last month’s fuel. Start with Long-Term Food Storage: What Actually Lasts 25 Years, and don’t skip the fat-storage problem. Cooking oil goes bad long before rice does.
Power
A refinery with its own engineers, backup systems and a billion-dollar balance sheet went dark because a storm hit the power lines feeding it. Your house has none of that. A small solar setup keeps your freezer, radio, phone and a few lights going through a utility failure without burning fuel you may not be able to replace. Cheap Off-Grid Power: Real Solar Setups Under $1,000 shows three builds that actually work.
Heat
Heating oil comes from the same part of the barrel as diesel. That means every problem in this article lands on Northeast furnaces the moment the weather turns. Call your dealer about a price lock this week. If backup heat is part of your plan, put a carbon monoxide detector on every floor before you ever light it.
Community
Regional shortages don’t hit evenly. One town’s stations run dry while the next county over still has fuel, and the neighbor with a farm tank, a woodstove or a working generator becomes the most important person on your road. Build those relationships before you need them. Prepper Communities: Building a Survival Network in Troubled Times covers how to start.
An offline library
When the biggest bank on Wall Street says it can’t model what happens next, the internet will fill that gap with noise, rumors and recycled AI slop. Keep reliable reference material on hand for fixing equipment, preserving food and treating injuries. It needs to work with no signal and no grid. Offline Knowledge Hubs: Building Your Own Digital Survival Library shows you how. Back it up with paper from our Best Survival Books list and loaded readers from Ebooks for Survivalists. Books don’t need power. And if you’ve been handing your thinking over to systems you don’t control, read They Built the Matrix, We Walked In.
Skills
The most useful skill in a fuel crunch is keeping what you already own running: changing your own oil, replacing filters, and maintaining small engines and diesel equipment. The next most useful is having a second way to earn money if your industry is one of the ones absorbing “demand destruction.” Our 90-day plan for job loss is the place to start.
Watch What Happens Next
There are two things we’re watching now.
First is Joliet. If Exxon announces a quick restart and actually gets the plant running normally, some pressure comes off the Midwest.
If the shutdown starts looking more like what happened in 2024, that’s a different story.
Second is the Saudi East-West pipeline. If Saudi Arabia restores most of that capacity quickly, the market gets some breathing room. If repairs really take five or six weeks, the world has another major oil bottleneck sitting on top of an already screwed-up market.
Either way, diesel is already around $6.39 a gallon. You don’t need somebody on television to officially declare a fuel crisis before you start paying attention.